Lying at Funerals
by Ben Skywalker
Summary: AUending of Once a Ranger. Character death. A former ranger reflects upon the lies told during funerals and the acts put on by everyone around.


Okay, so this isn't what I needed to be working on but... Oh well.

Before I forget, Thank you to Sanguinedarkness666 for beta-ing this. Hopefully between the two of us, we fixed all my spelling erros...

This little ditty came from watching YouTube at 1:30 in the morning. The vidoes of the interviews at the Power Morphicon are really quite funny. Anyway, this was inspired when Johnny Yong Bosch, aka. Adam Park, admitted that he tried to convince the writers to kill Adam at the end of "Once a Ranger." I, of course, instantly thought _Thank God, they had more sense then that_. But that got me started wondering... What _if_ Adam had died during that final battle against Thrax? How do explain something like that at a funeral? And - since I'm slash-minded - what would Rocky think?

So, here is what I came up with. Do be gentle. This is my first attempt at blatant AU as well as my first character death fic.

Semi-kinda-not-really spoilers for "Once a Ranger."

Hope you guys enjoy. Please tell me what you think!

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**Lying at Funerals  
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Rocky had always hated funerals. Having to put on a suit and tie and stand around trying to offer condolences to the living, when nothing he said was ever good enough. Watching people mourn the loss of someone that most of them hadn't really known… Ever since the first funeral he had gone to, for his great-uncle Manuel—whom he had met a whole one time—he had realized that funerals were not his thing. They were shams. His mother had told him to behave, when all ten-year-old Rocky had wanted to do was play on the swing-set there at the church. He didn't feel the loss personally, and neither did most of the other people. It was just what was expected. For all the majority of the people would know, the priest could have been talking about someone else. They didn't know the person being buried… Not really.

Yet it was worse, he realized now, when you did know the deceased. When you knew in no uncertain terms that what the eulogist was saying was a lie. As he looked around he saw a few faces in the crowd that he recognized; a few others like him that knew the truth. But most of these idiots had no clue. No clue! Anger simmered inside of him. This entire thing was a fake. A lie. And most of the people didn't even know.

His mother sat beside him, holding his hand. Adela DeSantos had given up trying to control her tears at the moment they had walked into the church, and now she sniffed, using a tissue to wipe her eyes as the man up the front of the church continued spouting the lies he'd been fed. On the other side of Rocky, his younger brother Ricky sat with his arm around his wife. She was one of the worst, Rocky thought bitterly. She was absorbing what the eulogist said intently, taking it for fact. She had never even _met_ him while he was alive. _Never_. It was all the young man could do to keep himself from jumping up and screaming those words at her.

A car accident. That was a load of shit. It was a lie that had been discussed, arranged, and agreed upon before being spoon-fed to the windbag at the podium. No one was bold enough to question it. No one wondered how a fatal wreck could leave behind an undamaged car. They hadn't asked about the "other car" that had been involved. No, they were all too busy putting on their masks of sorrow, too busy whispering about what a shame it was for someone so young to have to die, too busy _pretending_ to care.

It made him want to jump up, storm to the front of the church, throw the pompous eulogist that _hadn't even known him_, for Christ's sake, out of the way and tell everyone gathered the truth—that what they were hearing was complete and utter bullshit. That it wasn't an accident. He had known what he was doing, but had chosen to finish it anyway. And the only reason these people were _here_ was because he had willingly done what he had. They just didn't know. They mourned, saying it was a pity it had happened, disgracing _his_ sacrifice.

Refusing to watch the man up front, refusing to look at that casket, the former ranger found himself staring at the closest thing to truth he had yet seen in the church—a small group of five young men and one young woman. The young blonde woman looked solemn, clutching the hand of the dark haired man beside her. She at least had known him… had been there when it had happened. But beside the young couple was where he found his attention focused. A blonde man sat there, expression serious, not even bothering to put on the mask everyone else was wearing. He knew the truth, but he didn't know the body in the coffin. At least he wasn't pretending though. He just sat there, a slight curl of his lip saying that he was thinking the same thing as Rocky—the car accident was a load of shit and the people who believed it were morons—and leaning against the young Asian man next to him. For them, there was no faked mourning, no disrespect made by overlooking the truth of what had happened. There was simply a thankfulness that they were both still there… that they were still together.

It was that, over everything else, which made Rocky's bitter shell start to crack. He had been like that once. It hurt that it was over, but… He couldn't bring himself to think that it wasn't supposed to happen. He couldn't bring himself to fully form the thoughts that made him hate the people around him—"What a pity"—because then… What had it all been for? If he couldn't accept it—no matter how hard it was—then he was worse than everyone else here. Because he knew… knew the man who'd died two days ago. He knew the truth behind his death and knew it wasn't an accident. He knew…

Rocky knew he was going to cry. He hadn't wanted to, because that would start the lies again. People would approach, saying what a good person he'd been, that it was awful that he'd died like that. That he shouldn't have died. But they didn't understand. They didn't know that _because_ he was a good person, he had died.

As the silent tears began to fall, he felt his mother hug him close to her, assuming that he was crying because of the injustice of it all. And he was. Just not the injustice she thought.

Rocky wasn't crying because Adam Park, his lover, was dead. As much as that mere thought further shredded his broken heart, that wasn't what finally broke him there in that church. He was crying because these people would never know _why_ Adam had died. They would never know that Adam had died so all of them could live. They said it was a shame. They said his death was tragic. They said it was pointless.

They wouldn't ever know…

END

Anyone who can guess the other two couples in this story get cyber-cookies! Yum. It should be pretty easy...

PLEASE, remember to click the pretty little button and tell me what you thought. I'll make me warm and fuzzy inside.


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